


The Light That's Inside

by Neelh



Series: The Mabel Nyoomiverse [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Autistic Pines Family, Gen, Post-Canon, The Power Of Mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-07 17:32:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7723504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel does awesome, glitter-tastic, sweater-licious things. It's kind of her thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. shoes and school

**Author's Note:**

> hey dudes, this isn't gonna be my best work ever, but. i. okay i just really like mabel and these tiny scraps are gonna be chronological, hopefully, and i am very tired when i write them so just. yeah. i really like mabel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day one: trust

Mabel stares at her shoes.

They’re not on her feet. That’s kind of the first thing that she needs to mention in the ongoing commentary that sometimes happens in her brain. Sometimes it sounds like Dipper and sometimes it sounds like Mom and sometimes it sounds like Morgan Freeman but right now it just sounds like thought-words. Like, just the acknowledgement of words existing and stuff. Because heck yeah does she know big words like _ongoing_ and _acknowledgement_!

But yeah, Mabel stares at her shoes. She is staring at her shoes. She’s knitted a new green sweater for her first day back at school, and her hairband is adding the pressure over her head that feels nice-good and right-good and not-about-to-fly-off-the-handle-or-whatever-good. And the sweater is so _cool_! It’s got a pencil on the front and the eraser end has a little smiley face and the pencil has eight legs and is drawing a line because when she was drawing the day before yesterday she was thinking about spiders and how their webs come through their butts and she was pretending to fart out webs and Dipper was laughing but _basically_ pencils are just art spiders. Not to say that actual insecty-crawly spiders can’t do art, but the basic idea is that pencils make things on paper and stuff and if she explains it too much then it’s gonna sound even less like a cool thing so she’s gonna stop there and just. Stare at her shoes.

These are the shoes that she wore during the apocalypse, where time slowed down in the outside world and everything that Mabel knew in Gravity Falls went all _blergh_ and flipped upside down, like when she’s aggressively shaking a snowglobe and then it slips and she drops it and then it breaks and _that is a very bad thought Mabel you stop that right now_ and yeah.

Dipper knows that she started the apocalypse. Grunkle Ford is less likely to know but still probably does because yeah, he’s really really really smart even if he has a silly tattoo and also a lot of scars but that tattoo is very silly and pretty and Mabel may have knitted a sweater with the design on but she’s not gonna wear it if Grunkle Ford responds to it with even the littlest bit of discomfort when she shows it to him.

Mabel didn’t tell Grunkle Stan, and she doesn’t think that Dipper or Ford will either. Because Grunkle Stan will probably be okay with it, and Mabel knows this, but she doesn’t really _know_ it. It’s kind of a weird anxious brain disconnect, which sucks, but her sweater is comfy and her skirt is comfy and she can put the possibility of anyone hating her to the back of her mind because she knows Grunkle Stan, and she can rationalise that he loves her, and if he still loved her after the water tower incident and if he can punch a pterodactyl to save her pig and everything, then he would forgive her for her mistakes.

She puts on her shoes. She wore them during the apocalypse, and maybe that’s why she’s just spent some amount of time staring at them for literally no reason except to dwell on her self-doubts, and she's probably already thought about wearing those shoes then, but still. There’s a little scorch mark on the left sole, and she hopes that Mom won’t ask about it as she stands up and picks up her old schoolbag from her side.

It was just an average purple backpack a few years ago when it was stiff and new from the shop, but over time, it became Mabel’s bag. Each crease, stitched-up tear and scuffmark told a story; even if everyone, Mabel included, had forgotten how it went, and each patch and badge stitched onto the worn fabric held a memory.

The newest patch had pride of place in the top centre of the bag, where the little logo denoting the brand was before. Now, the embroidered logo was covered in a large circle a little bigger than Mabel’s palm, with a red machine-embroidered outline and a yellow background. Inside the circle, there was a small, simple picture of her new home in Oregon, surrounded my red all-caps letters that read:

 

I SURVIVED THE MYSTERY SHACK

 

Mabel slung the bag over her shoulders, grinning.

“Dipper, you butt! Are you ready?” she yells up the stairs.

Mom shouts something like “Don’t be so mean to your brother!” from the kitchen, but when Dipper thuds downstairs in the same clothes that he wore all the time over summer, Wendy’s hat pulled onto his head, he’s grinning.

There’s a gleam in his eye that goes with his smile like an affirmation, like determination, like a promise; and as Mabel opens the front door, shouting a goodbye to Mom, he follows right behind her.


	2. sad scarf and solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day two: scrapbook

Dipper has a new journal.

It’s a book that he found in the attic, like Dipper (and Mabel’s!) Guide to Mystery (and Nonstop Fun!), but it’s kind of a greyish ivoryish colour, and Dipper had cut out a pine tree out of a blue carton and stuck it on the front and he’s using to catalogue the scarce weirdness in Piedmont and Mabel wants in on it.

She asked him once, when he was sitting in bed and drawing in it. His pictures are really good and all Mabel can do it make things look silly, so she doesn’t blame him when he tells her _“No!”_ really vehememently and stuff or however it’s spelt.

And she really wants to write in it like how she wrote in Grunkle Ford’s journal about the map and the unicorns and Bipper and she just feels really stupid about the fact that the rest of the book is so perfectly written in good cursive or at least passable writing but she just scrawls in her notes and ideas in a dumb silly way and that must be her brain is acting up so she probably needs to knit on the Sad Scarf which is like normal knitting but when she doesn’t feel up to making big designs or anything.

The Sad Scarf is a gradient of colours. It goes carmine-maroon-dark-pink-light-pink-dusky-rose- dusky-lilac-normal-lilac and that’s as far as she’s got so far, so she keeps on knitting it. It’s about fifty stitches across, and if she slips up a little, Mabel doesn’t let herself beat herself up about it because it’s the Sad Scarf and it is an expression of her imperfect emotions. Or something. It’s _metaphorical_ and _artsy_ and _pretentious_.

Over the next month, Dipper goes out without her a lot more, and yeah, he’s probably doing his investigatey thing where he looks at frogs for an hour and realises that yeah, those are definitely normal frogs and that really loud noise that he heard two nights ago was probably Mom farting really loudly.

And Mabel has Waddles, who is literally the bestest cuddle partner ever, and he is just so nice about it and he snuffles his little piggy nose against her cheek and she feeds him gummy giraffes and it’s pretty good, except that, you know, her brother is ignoring her after three months spent together having their lives completely changed. And sometimes, you know, it would be nice to have Dipper show up and they could plan their Halloween outfits and include Waddles, because Mabel’s thinking something like The Witch of Am’s Dory and Aluminium Dude, with Waddles as Didi. But she’s not really sure if Dipper would go for that, so she needs him to either say yes or agree to her fallback idea of two of the characters from Spirit Venators and Waddles as a little puffy marshmallow ghost.

But Dipper doesn’t really hang out with her and it’s getting really annoying, because back in April that would have been normal, but it’s been three months of being around things that only the two of them can really understand and Mabel swears that if Dipper doesn’t just show up to hang out with her a bit for another week then she is going to steal his journal in order to get his attention. There is no way in which that plan could backfire.

She spends the six days before she puts her plan into action poking at Dipper during school, and kind of getting a rhythm and soft companionship feel going but not the proper _twins hanging out_ vibe that she’s going for. And then when they’re at home, Dipper holes away in his bedroom doing nothing and Mabel kind of wants her parents to let them share a room again but they’re teenagers and soon they are very much going to need their own spaces, or something. Grunkle Stan had told Mabel something about that when she was in Dipper’s body and accidentally got taught about various weird bodily functions that are literally going to be of no help whatsoever to either of them.

But _anyway_.

It’s been six days of Sad Scarf knitting and Waddles playing and repainting her room with a lot of glitter in various rainbow patterns, and Mabel settles down to come up with a cunning plan for the theft of a certain brother-stealing nerd book. She takes a piece of printer paper from the stack on the floor and takes the cap off of the lime green felt tip pen when there is a knock on her door.

And it’s not a normal parent knock, It’s a Dipper Knock, and she can tell because it’s the letter M and then D in Morse code and she doesn’t know that because of any reason that she came across but because Dipper told her himself when they were five and he had a book on secret codes and Mabel was the only one who always called him Dipper no matter what. And they’ve always knocked that way, when they bother to, because usually they just shout that they’re coming in and then proceed to go in and it’s normal, but this time it sounds hesitant and kind of quiet and if Mabel was listening to music then she wouldn’t have heard it.

She did, though, so she just says, “Come in!” and Dipper comes in, his hands behind his back and shifting from foot to foot.

They stare at each other for a moment. Mabel blinks. Dipper blinks. Mabel blinks again.

“Do you need to pee?” asks Mabel.

“No!” Dipper says. “I…”

“Are you hiding something behind your back?” she asks, putting away the pen and paper.

“Yes,” Dipper says, pulling it out, and _oh my gosh that is the prettiest book ever_.

It’s like. There is a cloth covering. And it’s _cotton_. And it’s _lurid pink_. And on the front, in glitter felt, is a poorly stitched shooting star with purple, green, and orange stripes.

“ _I love it_ ,” she breathes, before her mouth stretches into a grin. “Where did you get it?”

Dipper does the shifty-foot thing again, pulling on Wendy’s hat. “Well, I kind of… I found a bookbinding course, and most of the people on it are older than me, and it was kind of tiring because there were people, and I-“

Mabel. Kind of forgets that there’s stuff about finishing sentences because she knowswhat Dipper is leading up to because to be hones it was pretty obvious so she hugs him and swings him around and squeezes him because this is her journal, this is her scrapbook journal, and she puts Dipper down and opens it and the pages are pale pink and they smell faintly of roses and glue.

“Where’s my camera thingy?” she asks, flapping her hands, and Dipper finds it within five seconds under the nearest pile of cool rocks and craft supplies, only to have it replaced in his hands by the scrapbook and to have his Sister pull him in for a picture.

“Thank you,” she whispers to him as the shutter clicks.

The picture is kind of blurry, but it’s the perfect first page for the new scrapbook-journal of Mabel Pines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look. technically it's mabel's scrapbook. it's her new scrapbook. now if dipper loses his memory, he'll have all of these weird mabelly things to bring him back!


	3. flapping and fish fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day three: the future

“Hey, Dipper, I hope you don’t mind but-” Mabel cuts herself off as she looks at the person sitting on her bed. “ _Holy guacamole you are beautiful_.”

The person on her bed does a finger-guns thing with a wink and a grin, exposing perfectly straight teeth. “What’s up, mini-me?” she says.

Mabel squeezes her hands against her own cheeks. The ones on her current-body face, not the big-Mabel’s ones. “I’m going to become a beautiful woman.”

Future-Mabel’s smile turns into the grin-grimace that Mabel had long ago given the name _grinmace_. “I’d prefer _zie_ ,” zie says.

Mabel blinks.

Future-Mabel blinks.

“Okay!” she beams, clambering onto the bed next to her future self. “Anyway, what’s it like in the future?”

Future-Mabel begins to play with zir pastel rainbow fishtail braid. “Well, how about I…” Zie pulls out a scrapbook from a bag next to zir on the bed. “…Show you!”

Mabel squeals and begins to flap her hands at the expert design of the scrapbook and the bedazzled embellishments that look like an even sparklier, more deluxe version of Mabels scrapbook-journal. She runs her hand over it, feeling the plastic bumps of the gems and the velvet of the spine.

“It’s already perfect,” she whispers.

Future-Mabel opens the scrapbook to the first page, letting Mabel see the glossy photograph that dominates the first page and the puffy monster stickers on the inside front cover.

In the middle of the picture, Future-Mabel is hugging Dipper, zir hair looking a little brighter, and both of them looking bulky and muscular. On Mabel’s left, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are grinning at the camera, Ford with one arm slung around Mabel and Dipper and the other around Stan. On Dipper’s right, Wendy, Soos, and Melody are smiling, while also wearing matching t-shirts referencing some kind of capybara battle. Waddles sits at Mabel’s feet in the picture, and he obscures zir legs up to mid-thigh, where Mabel can see a ruffled skirt with multiple flannel patterns peeking out.

“He’s giant!” Mabel squeals. She leaps off the bed and runs to find Waddles, who turned out to be trotting along down the hallway to visit her. With another squeal, she scoops him up in her arms and carries him over to return to her initial position on the bed.

Future-Mabel’s grin widens upon seeing Waddles, and zie begins to pet him enthusiastically. “Perfect perfect perfect oink oink oink _squishy_!”

Zir hands then begin to flap, and Mabel flaps back, because these are emotions that are being shared by a connection and it’s great! Because she doesn’t get to do this that often with people other than Dipper because Candy doesn’t really flap her hands and neither does Grenda and she forgot to flap at Grunkle Ford and begin the flappy thingy that goes _flap flap flap_ and answers with _flap flap flap_ and basically it is a very good conversation!

Future-Mabel turns the page. There is a photograph of Mabel and Ford looking at each other with gigantic smiles. Both pairs of hands are incredibly blurry. On the other page, Mabel is punching a slightly older Preston Northwest in the face.

“He started to hurt Pacifica again,” says Future-Mabel, “so look out for her. The jumpier she is, the more hugs she needs!”

Mabel nods slowly, a determined expression crossing her face. “Hugs may not fix everything, but they help a lot.”

“You are the wisest thirteen-year-old to roam the planet,” Future-Mabel replies. Then zie ruffles her hair. Mabel catches zir in a hug, as well as Waddles, who oinks happily.

“You smell like flowers and marshmallows and chicken nuggets,” Mabel says, her face smooshed sideways against Future-Mabel’s chest and neck and tucked under her chin.

“It’s fish fingers,” zie replies, stroking her hair. “Now, let’s look through the scrapbook, because there are some possibly helpful insights to the future and some really dumb pictures of Dipper in this. Also, I glued in Grunkle Stan’s winning lottery ticket. You need to memorise those numbers and tell him them on the eighteenth of July the year after next, so I’d advise writing them on your hand in invisible ink and copying them down into your current scrapbook-journal once the Time Police have gone.”

So Mabel snuggles into her future self’s lap, and the two of them plus Waddles read about the faraway year of 2015, yet to be discovered in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this utilised the scrapbook more than scrapbook day


	4. boops and brobros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day four: favourite character trait

“Bwap.”

“Mabel.”

“Bwap bwap.”

“Mabel, seriously?”

“Bwap bwap bwaaaaaap!”

“Mabel.”

“Bwappity bwap bwap _bwaaaaaaaaap_!”

“Are you done?”

“Bwap!”

“Now?”

“Yep!” she trills, her brown hair lowering ominously before his eyes to obscure the view of his messy bedroom; an upside-down face with a braces-filled grin following after.

“Okay,” Dipper smiles, sighing quietly through his nose. “What’s the damage?”

“I put the entire sheet of four-dimensional space stickers on there,” grins Mabel. “They’re bumpy _and_ scratch and sniff! You’re safe to not shower for another day!”

Dipper rubs his back. “That one feels like a bunch of very tiny grapes.”

“It’s Neptune, Dipper,” Mabel says. Her head begins swinging from side to side like a pendulum, her hair following after. “ _Neptuuuuuune_ …”

Suppressing a snort, Dipper continues, “And the one next to my right shoulder blade? It’s… Kind of really squishy.”

“That’s the international space station!” she beams. “It’s totally that squishy in real life, right?”

Dipper blinks slowly. “It’s made of metal. It’s probably really hard.”

“Metal can be squishy!” shouts Mabel, flinging her head up. Her hair probably goes over in an arch after her head, but Dipper can’t really see it so that’s mostly just hypothetical. It’s pretty likely, though, due to how quickly his sister moves sometimes. Seriously, she is ninety percent sugar energy. She could probably be used as a power plant.

“I’m pretty sure it can’t,” he says. “Unless it gets really hot and begins to melt, in which case, if it was the International Space Station, everyone on board would most likely be dead.”

“But it would be squishy, right?” Mabel asks.

Finally giving up on not laughing, Dipper leans against his sister as she sits down on the carpet next to him. next to him. “Yeah, probably.”

They laugh quietly for a moment before falling into companionable silence. Occasionally, Dipper nudges Mabel with his elbow gently, and she would retaliate by booping his nose, elbow, shoulder, or knee.

“Hey, you didn’t make a dumb picture on my back, did you?” Dipper asks.

It’s Mabel’s turn to snort, and she says, “The _dumbest_.”

“Let me guess, it’s-“

Mabel places a finger on his left shoulder blade, and slowly traces over multiple stickers that gently press into his back.

“Yep,” Dipper grins. “I thought as much.”

“It’s the dorkiest constellation,” Mabel begins.

Dipper coughs. “Asterism, Mabel. It’s part of another constellation. It’s called an asterism.”

Mabel continues as if she hadn’t heard him, elbowing him in the ribs in a way that she probably thought was gentle, and continues, “And the dorkiest brobro!”

She tackles him into a hug, and he lets himself fall, wrapping his arms around his sister and best friend in the universe.

“You’re not gonna let me take these stickers off, aren’t you?”

“ _Never_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't going to put a note but i typoed the title as boobs and brobros which is. uncomfortable


	5. sewing and steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day five: missed moments

Mabel groans as she finishes packing away her current craft project. It’s huge and important for reasons that she can’t disclose to anyone except Waddles, but her parents want her to clean everything in her room for some reason. They told Dipper to do the same, but they let him keep the giant map of every cryptid he’s found so far in the Pacific Northwest on the floor, where it’s kind of being an untouchable rug until he gets around to taking down the Ghost Harassers posters to stick it on his wall.

And it sucks because that craft project that Mabel has is for Grunkles and such family and she’s said too much! But it’s okay, because her room is clean and dusted and completely Un-Mabelish. Like, no dust? Dust is science flesh glitter from dead skin cells or something!

The doorbell rings, and Mom calls for Mabel and Dipper to answer it, even though she’s only drinking tea and watching TV or something. Dipper jumps up, because Mabel can hear him, and shouts an affirmative response. He literally shouts the word _affirmative_ , like a robot nerd or something. Well, a nerd for robots, not a nerd made out of robot.

Mabel follows with a sigh, because she was getting so excited for that craft project and completely in the rhythm for it, knitting and stitching at a bazijbabillion miles an hour, but then Mom was just like “ _Myeh, tidy!_ ” and now the doorbell’s like “ _Ding dong_ ,” and it _sucks_.

Which is probably why she only runs downstairs like a spooked chicken-nugget-mera (a chimera that has chicken nugget parts instead of a living chicken) when she hears two familiar voices in unison.

They sound something like “Hey, Dipper!” mixed with a baby dolphin screaming.

“Wendy!” Mabel yells, scampering down the stairs on all fours before leaping into her arms. Wendy staggers a bit, but keeps Mabel securely in her arms like a little toddler.

“I don’t understand,” Dipper says, as Waddles runs between his and Wendy’s ankles while squealing with excitement. “How, why, I just-“

“The answer to all of the above is that I live in Gravity Falls,” she laughs. Her chest shakes a little, like a pig toy that said the _Three Little Piggies_ poem thing that Mabel has and when it laughs it vibrates and it feels so nice to cuddle it against her chest when it does that. Then Wendy continues, “The giant tree monster that lives in the forest trashed the house and the high school, so school’s stopped for a while and my dad sent me here. Turns out that helping to save the world means that you get out of rebuilding an entire school, huh?”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Dipper says, but his broad smile makes it clear that he doesn’t mind.

Wendy shrugs, shifting Mabel a bit. “Well, I didn’t have anywhere to stay, because Soos opened up the Shack for people to stay in and there wasn’t enough room for me, so Mr. Pines called your dad and sorted it out and now…” She shrugs again with a smile.

Mabel clambers down and grabs Wendy’s hand. “That means you’re staying in my room, right mom?”

Wendy blinks, until Mom peers through the living room door. “Yes, dear, the airbed is under your bed.”

Mabel hollers, punching the air. “Come on!” she yells, dragging her friend upstairs. “Sleepover! Sleepover!”

Wendy, never able to resist chanting, joins in. “Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!”

Distantly, as Mabel pulls out the airbed and the pump, she can hear Dipper and Mom’s voices.

“Are they… Always like this?”

“You get used to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanted wendy to have a sleepover with mabel. which. will probably continue in the next two days. because i'm writing them today. because i'm going to a drama workshop and i have to stay in a tent again.


	6. calls and cartoons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day six: being cared for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emetophobia (vomiting) cw for this chapter

Mabel spent one night in the airbed.

The next day, she was sneezing and coughing all throughout school, so Dipper eventually took her to the nurse’s office. The nurse took one look at her then asked if their mom or dad was home.

“Uh… No, I don’t think so,” said Dipper, adjusting his pine tree cap that he has finally reunited with. “Mum’s at work, and Dad’s got that new job with the kids, right?”

Mabel nods with a pathetic little sneeze. At least her sneezes sound manlier than Dipper’s, _heyo_!

She tries to say that, but apparently all that comes out is something like “ _Urgleburf_ ,” and then she throws up on the floor.

“I’ll… Call her work number,” the nurse says as he slides away to the computer.

Mabel sits on the couch in the office, Dipper patting her shoulder, and feeling like absolute _poop_. Her stomach is throwing a late-night party without her permission and it _sucks_. She stays silent as the nurse makes a few calls before mopping up the puke.

“Is this how you feel when I have sleepovers all night?” Mabel asks.

Dipper smiles sympathetically. She can feel how much he loves her in just that one moment, with him squeezing her shoulder comfortingly and being there for her, no matter what. “I have no idea what you mean,” he says.

Mabel groans and rests her head against his shoulder, when a familiar figure walks into the room.

“’Sup,” says the voice, and for a moment, Mabel thinks that Norman, the five gnomes stacked together who kidnapped her once, has returned, but then her brain punches through the weird sicky fog and goes, “ _Hey, loser, that’s Wendy! Wendy! Yay!_ ” before puking on the brain carpet in her brain.

But the brain carpet. Not a real carpet. Because this floor is pure, one-hundred-percent, definitely linoleum! Probably.

But that’s Wendy who just walked in, her flannel shirt tied around her waist and looking like some kind of axeless lumberjack queen, even more now than usual due to her old trapper hat returning to its rightful place on her head.

“Are you Wendy Corduroy?” the nurse asks, sounding kind of intimidated.

“Sure,” Wendy says, smirking a little. “I heard you were puking your guts out, Mabel?”

Mabel nods. Ooh, headrush!

“Were there any, like, little mangled gummy koalas and stuff?” she asks with a grin that clearly means something about teenagery gross interests.

Mabel nods as Dipper winces. “What kind of-? Mabel, that’s gross.”

“C’mon, you two,” Wendy laughs, walking over to Mabel and Dipper, when the nurse stops her.

“I’m sorry, but only Mabel has permission to leave today,” he says.

Mabel thinks that Wendy and Dipper are doing an expression conversation from the long silence that happens as she closes her eyes, and she guesses that at some point she drifts off, because the next thing she knows, she’s on Wendy’s lap on the bus with Wendy’s arms wrapped around her.

“We’re going home,” Wendy whispers in Mabel’s ear, and to be honest, it’s all kind of foggy right now. Mabel tries to get her brain to work, but Wendy just pets her hair.

“Shack?” Mabel mumbles, because Wendy is here and she smells like leaves and pine needles and cheap deodorant. She stays silent for a moment. She really wants Waddles. Waddles is good and a comfy weight on her lap and he cuddles really well. “Shack with Waddles?”

“Yes, we’re going to Waddles,” murmurs Wendy. Or at least, Mabel thinks she did. She’s kind of… Just… _Really_ tired…

 

-

 

Wendy finishes setting up Mabel’s blanket nest on the couch, a large bucket placed on the floor beside it. She had to take Mabel’s sweater off in case any vomit ended up on it. It’s really nice wool, too, Wendy guesses. She’s not an expert on wool, but the white yarn that made up the sheep on Mabel’s spring-themed sweater is ridiculously soft.

Wendy takes a moment to check whether pigs can get Mabel’s virus on her phone as Waddles oinks next to the bucket. And it sucks, because they can, and Waddles is so important to Mabel that she would most likely cry a lot if anything happened to him. And that _includes_ getting the flu.

She picks him up and carries him over to Dipper’s room, before patting his head.

“Mabel’s gonna need you a lot, but you can’t be with her right now, okay?” she says and damn it, she is speaking to a pig as though he can understand her. “You stay here and stay safe, got it?”

Waddles snuffles quietly, and Wendy leaves the room, closing the door as she goes. The giant navy blue seal that was on Mabel’s bed before Wendy came might be an okay replacement for the pig. Wendy hauls it downstairs to Mabel, who is still asleep in the blanket nest. Wendy puts the seal on the rest of the couch and sits on the floor.

Dumb daytime cartoons sound pretty good, to be honest. It’s not like Mabel will judge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pigs can get flu pretty easily from humans! mabel's gonna have to spend a week after recovering away from waddles, but after that they can have all the cuddles in the world and be perfectly healthy!!!


	7. summer and starts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> day seven: free day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short epilogue about summer and growing up and as a person or whatever

Spring had bloomed into summer; Wendy had returned to Gravity Falls months ago; and it was time for the twins to join her.

Mabel had packed her bags a month in advance with three sweaters, twelve t-shirts, fifteen skirts, and twenty balls of yarn. Dipper had been packed since December.

It was easier than last year to say goodbye to their parents. They are thirteen, soon to be fourteen, and while their hormones are beginning to affect them, they’re still Dipper and Mabel; Mystery Twins in Oregon.

They love their parents; but with the feeling of being on the bus, Waddles smuggled into Mabel’s backpack and resting on her lap, waving through the window with no regrets of leaving California; Mabel can’t help but feel that she belongs in that small, virtually unknown town in Oregon.

It will have changed; she knows that, because nothing ever stays the same. It never has, and it never will, no matter what she does or doesn’t do. And that’s okay. Soos lives in the Mystery Shack now, and Melody will be moving there in July. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford will be waiting, but they will look different. Not bad-different, though. Good-different, like the Mabel who came back in time with the best hair _ever_. Mabel had put glittery stuff in it before zie had left, and Future-Mabel had braided Mabel’s hair in the same way that zir own was done in.

But one day, she will be that person, and Soos, Wendy, and Melody will have faced a fleet of mutant capybaras, Stan and Ford will smile genuinely and less guardedly more and more often, and Dipper will still be her giant, beloved nerd of a brother. Candy will be working with Mr. Old Man McGucket on giant robots and self-tuning banjos and a way to keep the CIA from finding out about the less-legal and more-supernatural aspects of Gravity Falls, and Grenda will be splitting her time between Austria and Gravity Falls, and they will still be her people. Pacifica will be, as Mabel knew would happen, one of her closest friends. Waddles will still be the world’s most adorable piggy _ever_.

And Mabel will still return to Gravity Falls, time and time again, giving more of herself to it than she did the time before and growing more as a person or whatever in return.

And lots of things are going to change, and maybe new things will happen this year, and maybe things will happen this year that didn’t happen last year.

But as Mabel settles down in the bus seat next to Dipper, they exchange a smile.

 

It’s only the start of summer, after all. They have plenty of time to drive each other crazy.


End file.
